We are proud to announce that John Folan, AIA, LEED AP was awarded full-professorship as a tenured faculty member with the School of Architecture in 2016.

John is the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture, Director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), and member of the Urban Laboratory faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (Bachelor of Science in Architecture, High Honors) and the University of Pennsylvania (Masters of Architecture) where he was a Kahn Fellow and recipient of the Henry Adams Medal.

SoA Head Steve Lee spearheaded the faculty search committee that found John. “I immediately realized the prodigious trajectory his career at the SoA would take in post-industrial Pittsburgh,” Steve remarked. “With his humble upbringing and his successful academic and professional career, it was clear that he would make Carnegie Mellon renowned for impact in the realm of public interest design. As a successor to my modest design-build efforts with the Solar Decathlon in the 00's, John has built a commanding reputation with the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), Project Re_ and the IDeATe Reality Computing endeavors. We are extremely fortunate to have him on our faculty.”

Registered as an Architect since 1995, John has focused his research on the methodologies employed in the translation from drawing to building. He investigates this in two ways: as pure developmental analysis and in application through critical practice. The research embraces methodology in the context of site condition, constructive logic, and material technologies – both traditional and emergent. A fundamental component of the research is the development of representational techniques and analytical experiments that enable simultaneous study of physical and phenomenological conditions. Experimentation with representation and analytical testing is investigated as a means of collapsing the multifaceted layers that separate conception and construction, establishing an analogue between representation and fabrication.